Tag Archives: tabletop grill

Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot

Just couple blocks from my work in downtown, Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot is my go to place for spicy oriental noodles exactly that way I want. It’s a oriental buffet place near the water park which is great for any meal for any casual occasions.

Portland Mongolian Grill and Hot Pot
Portland Mongolian Grill and Hot Pot

From wide variety of fresh vegetables and proteins, the customers will fill up their bowls with items of their choices, pour all sorts of different flavors (like hot oil, garlic/ginger water, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and etc) on the ingredients and take it to the grilling area. The very friendly attendees will dump the whole bowl on the hot grill and cook it to perfection within few minutes. You can come back as many times as you want and fill your bowl and take it to the grilling station.

Fresh items to choose from in Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot
Fresh items to choose from in Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot

If you are there for the first time, my suggestion is that don’t fill up your bowls with too much noodles or other stuff. Try and see which sauce or flavored liquid you like and how much of it you like on top of your food. Since the cook won’t add anything to your food, it kind of depends on you how you are flavoring your dish. It may taste very bland for the first time if you don’t add enough herbs and sauces.

My bowl of raw ingredients ready to be cooked in Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot
My bowl of raw ingredients ready to be cooked in Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot

There are also soup and plain rice that comes with the buffet price. I have never tried it but Portland Mongolian Grill & Hot Pot also has hot pot items where you can cook your own items on your table in hot broth.

And it's cooked
And it’s cooked

I love this place for any quick lunch while I am at work (or get a take out box) or bring my kids for an informal dinner. If you have never tried a Mongolian grill place, this will be a very nice to start with.

Slappy Cakes – Flip your own pancakes

Yes, you read that right. Slappy Cakes is a fun place to enjoy a brunch, especially for the kids. You get to shape, design, and flip your own pancakes the way you want it and then top it off with your favorite toppings. If you are not a pancake lover, not to worry…they have a whole bunch of other full-service brunch items in the menu that you can order while your family or friends make their own pancakes. It’s a crowded and noisy restaurant…a perfect family place where I would rather be on a Saturday morning with my cubs.

Slappy Cakes in Portland, OR
Slappy Cakes in Portland, OR

Each table in Slappy Cakes comes with a hot table-top griddle to make your pancakes. Customers order whatever types of batter they want for their pancakes, including chocolate, buttermilk, seasonal flavors, gluten-free batter, and etc. Then order your toppings and extras and voila. Each of you will get a spatula to flip your pancakes. It’s a  fun and sleek place for the kids to explore their creative cooking sides.

Inside Slappy Cakes in Portland, OR
Inside Slappy Cakes in Portland, OR

We ordered 2 bottles of buttermilk pancake batter, few toppings like strawberries, bananas, blueberries, scallions (for savory pancakes, and they are pretty good), and whipped cream. My girls also got sides of scrambled eggs with cheese and turkey bacon. I had vegetable hashbrown which is a bowl of potatoes, mixed vegetables with scrambled eggs on top. I added few drops of hot sauce and it was a bowl of perfect deliciousness. Oh, and the batter for the pancakes…my daughters and I were talking about how good the pancakes tasted.

Kids are making and flippin' their pancakes in Slappy Cakes
Kids are making and flippin’ their pancakes in Slappy Cakes

Slappy Cakes are open weekdays until 2pm and weekends until 3pm. Plan to stand in the line for at least half an hour at any given day and time. We were there on a Saturday morning around 10:30am and waited about 40 minutes to get a table. But at the end, it’s all worth it. And despite of the large crowd and waiting customers, we got a great customer service and a friendly waitress. Also, be ready to park on the street-side in this neighborhood…sometimes couple blocks away during a busy time.

My vege hashbrown in Slappy Cakes
My vege hashbrown in Slappy Cakes

I would go back to Slappy Cakes a thousand more times if it was closer to where I live. I would recommend this place to anyone who loves having big breakfast any day of the week. Bring your kids or your loved ones and have fun flippin’.

Gangnam Korean BBQ – Hillsboro

This is kind of a very special restaurant for me where I’ve some sweet memories with couple special people in my life. Last year I visited this place for the first time with two of my friends, second time was with another friend. And then since then I really wanted to bring my two daughter to try the food here. So, finally last week…on a Thursday night, I brought them to Gangnam Korean BBQ and their expression was “it was a REALLY good dinner”. Happy kids mean happy mom.

From of Gangname Korean BBQ in Hillsboro, OR

Anyways,  last week was the first time I was there during dinner and we were actually lucky to get an empty table…all the tables with built-in grills were taken, so we ended up getting a regular one. If weeknights get that busy, imagine the crowd on Fridays or Saturdays. This is what happens when a place serves good food. But my experience here during lunch is better, only because it’s much quieter. But despite of all  the business, our server was the friendliest and fastest.

Noodles soup, sul-lung tang, in Gangnam Korean BBQ in Hillsboro, OR
Noodles soup, sul-lung tang, in Gangnam Korean BBQ in Hillsboro, OR

Gangnam BBQ menu has overwhelmingly variety of Asian food. I am more into spicy food and this place really satisfies my taste buds with most of their items. Of course they have non-spicy soup or appetizers or main dishes too. I forgot the name of the dishes that we ordered last two times but we definitely had thinly sliced cow’s tongue once that we grilled on the table top. This time we ordered a soup called, sul-lung tang, which was a very simple noodles soup with green onion and sliced beef (although there were barely a few small slices) for my little one. Another one we got was the, bulgogi…thinly sliced beef, marinated in sauce…supposedly this is a must-try item here. If we had the BBQ grill table, we would have grilled the beef slices ourselves, but this time, they grilled the beef for us and brought it to table. I have to say the portion of each dish is big in Gangnam BBQ. All three of us could lavishly share the beef, side rice, and the soup. By the way, bulgogi came with 6 or 7 different condiments like kimchis, pickled and fresh salads and etc. Make sure to add either little bit of all of those or at least some to add to your dish to get the whole picture. And FYI, if your server gives you their HOT sauce, use ONLY one drop of it (as our waiter suggested)…it’s REALLY HOT. If you need more, you can always add more later.

Beef Bulgogi with side condiments in Gangnam Korean BBQ in  Hillsboro, OR

Gangnam Style Korean BBQ is a fantastic place to choose for any occasions with friends or families of any age. My kids loved its vibe and atmosphere and…of course the food. I keep coming back to this place every once in a while and I’ll definitely be back again to try some of their other weird and interesting plates, like cold soup, bibimbop, seafood BBQ, grilled mackerel, and mango mochi ice-cream. I was never a big Korean food fan, but this place really changed my opinion with its presentation, flavorful items and ingredients, and the trendy energy.